Council Member Margaret Chin, Downtowner of the Year

When we decided to start a tradition of presenting awards to outstanding community members who live and work in downtown Manhattan, the one thing we knew would be easy was finding recipients. We weren’t disappointed.

The inaugural Downtown OTTY (Our Town Thanks You) Awards honor a diverse group of amazing people from all neighborhoods, professions and backgrounds, but the one thing they have in common is their commitment to making downtown an incredible place. Whether it’s a school chef getting kids excited about kale chips, a longtime block association president dedicated to preserving local history or a yoga instructor who gives back, each of our winners brings their specific brand of vision, passion and talent to their community.

We hope you enjoy reading about the people who make your neighborhood great, and we know that they’ll all continue to impress us in the coming year.

Sincerely,

Megan Bungeroth

Editor-in-Chief, Our Town Downtown

2012 Downtown OTTY Award winners

Council Member Margaret Chin – Downtowner of the Year

Susan Henshaw Jones – Culture

Derrick Komorowski – Real Estate Royalty

Kit Yuen – Healthcare Pro

Liz Berger – Community Builder

Dr. James Cooper – Religion

Officer James Rudolph – Bravest & Finest

David Garza – Downtown Recovery

Barbara Warren – Healthcare Pro

Jenny Gensterblum – Culinary Excellence

Tricia Donegan – Entrepreneur

Christopher Kui – Downtown Recovery

Richard Blodgett – Community Builder

Richard Blodgett has spent decades getting to know the Charlton Street community

By Rebecca Temerario

Richard Blodgett didn’t expect to fall in love with New York. After graduating from Middlebury College in 1962, Blodgett relocated to New York City for a job with the Wall Street Journal. In 1968, Blodgett moved to his current address. Forty-four years later, Blodgett remains a resident of historic Charlton Street, where he serves as president of the Charlton Street Block Association, a position he has held on and off for 10 years.

Blodgett instantly fell in love with Charlton Street because of the old houses and neighborhood charm.

“Everybody knows each other. I have a neighbor who has been here since 1941,” he said.
Charlton Street possesses a rich history; Aaron Burr is credited with the conception of Charlton Street, naming the road after Dr. John Carlton, a former president of the New York Medical Society. John Jacob Astor funded the street’s development, and George Washington once resided in the area. Other notable residents have included poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, singer Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, and actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

As Charlton Street’s resident community builder, Blodgett “likes interacting with people—it’s a wonderful way to know neighbors and work together for the community.” Blodgett’s block association contains 325 houses on Charlton Street from Sixth Avenue to Varick Street. The Charlton Street Block Association is also responsible for the upkeep of Charlton Plaza, a neighborhood park.

“We have a lot of resident gardeners,” Blodgett said.

Blodgett also serves on the South Village Advisory Board, part of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.

“Dick has been the president of the Charlton Street Block Association for more years than I can count,” said Andrew Berman, head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “He is a neighborhood historian and has led fights to address traffic safety issues and to preserve the character of his neighborhood. He knows everyone in his little micro-neighborhood south of Houston Street.”

Blodgett not only knows his neighbors, he knows his restaurants and shops too. Speaking of a favorite restaurant in the South Village, Once Upon a Tart, Blodgett can say that he “was there the day it opened, twenty-some years ago.” Pointing to vintage pictures on the wall, Blodgett comments that Once Upon a Tart was once a bakery. He even knows the owner.

Blodgett’s role as community builder and historian doesn’t stop there. He has partnered with Berman and the South Village Advisory Board in order to historically preserve the South Village, and designate the area from Sixth Avenue to West Boulevard, between West Third Street to Watts Avenue. Unlike Charlton Street, which was designated as a historic district in 1966, that area isn’t protected from the possibility of buildings being torn down. Blodgett wants to change that.

Currently, Blodgett is involved with the Coalition for the Pedestrian Safety and Houston and Sixth. After a woman was killed near that intersection in August, the Coalition has petitioned the Department of Transportation for “a dedicated green light for pedestrians, so that they can cross while all traffic at the intersection is stopped,” said Blodgett. The Coalition collected 1,624 signatures on their petition, and is supported by New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Blodgett and the Community Board are currently awaiting a response from the DOT.

Blodgett has also been an instrumental voice in a proposed rezoning of Houston Square. The area near Trinity Church as it stands now is mostly commercial, but seeks residential zoning. Blodgett is working with Trinity Church on the issue of building height; he stresses that the tall buildings would change the character of Houston Square.

In his role as president of the Charlton Street Block Association, Blodgett has become an integral voice of his community. He has even penned an extensive history of Charlton Street. Blodgett will surely join the list of notable Charlton Street residents as future historians and community builders look back on his admirable service to his community.

Chris Kui helped bring emergency funds and hope to downtown after Hurricane Sandy struck

By Emily Johnson

On the third day after Hurricane Sandy, the staff of Asian Americans for Equality managed to gather themselves and return to their Division Street office—but like the rest of the Lower East Side, it was dark. Without electricity, they couldn’t even open the gate.

For executive director Chris Kui, it was a moment of truth. People in the neighborhood badly needed the sort of emergency relief his community development nonprofit was equipped to provide.

“We knew we had to pull together because we had to launch this loan fund,” he said last week at the office, which was once again bustling and brightly lit. “Could we find a reporter? We couldn’t even open our door. But we had one generator that we had for special events like street festivals, so we were able to use that generator to open up the gate, have a press conference, plug in a computer.”
Emergency loan funds became a standard first response for AAFE after last year’s Hurricane Irene. Kui oversaw two separate funds: one for homeowners and one for small businesses. It was a priority, he said, because for many business owners, waiting weeks or months for assessments and federal disaster assistance could mean they never reopen.

“They are tremendously affected by loss of sales. Restaurants, for example, they lost their inventory. Fish, poultry, they had to get rid of all of it,” he said. “It’s just tragic. Wholesale businesses and warehouses on the waterfront flooded. That $30,000 makes a big difference for desperate people.”

In the following days and weeks, AAFE disbursed 100 loans and organized a grassroots relief effort to deliver food and basic necessities to many of downtown Manhattan’s most vulnerable people—particularly recent immigrants with nowhere to go and seniors stuck in top-floor apartments in the Knickerbocker Village housing complex, where residents remained without power long after it was restored to the rest of downtown.

The organization also coordinated with city government to provide translation services for the large population of non-English speakers in Chinatown, Two Bridges and the Lower East Side. On-the-ground communication was crucial in assessing and prioritizing needs in the aftermath of the storm, and it helped many people navigate a complex system in which they might otherwise have been reluctant to place their trust.

“The community was so disoriented,” Kui said. “They needed timely and accurate info for how to register with FEMA. We tried to simplify the process.”

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), who nominated both Kui and David Garza of Henry Street Settlement for the OTTY awards, praised the men for stepping up day and night to provide what he called “life-saving help.”

“Those were very chaotic days and weeks after the storm,” Silver said. “Communication was difficult throughout the relief effort, and Chris was like a lifeline thousands of people relied on for information.”

The speaker also praised Kui’s “tireless” grassroots efforts to mobilize people to go door-to-door and make sure residents had blankets, food and water.

Kui, who lives in Flushing, did not suffer any flood damage but was himself without power for 10 days.

“Compared to other people, my personal suffering was nothing,” he said. “I feel attached to helping these folks. And I give credit to our staff. They really worked 24/7. Especially during the first three weeks, people were coming in on weekends to process loans.”

Looking ahead, Kui said, AAFE is already transitioning to more long-term recovery efforts.
“We’re looking at covering overhead costs for sanitation and cleanup, because those things cost money, and once people are stabilized they can go back to their jobs,” he said. “We’re here together to bring the community back.”

Tricia Donegan coaxes inspired poses and generosity out of her local yoga enthusiasts

By Sophia Rosenbaum

Yoga studios in New York are as common as pizza joints, but there’s a reason Lady Gaga chose Tricia Donegan to be her yoga instructor.

Donegan, 42, is a burst of energy with a toned physique adorned with tattoos and a mess of curly, multi-colored hair. She’s the owner of Bikram Yoga Lower East Side—a walk-up studio with cases of water bottles lining the stairwell, pops of pink paint from the floor to the ceiling and people dripping in sweat from the 107-degree yoga room.

With a team of 15 other instructors, Bikram Yoga LES offers six classes a day, seven days a week. Monty Stilson, 54, has been taking classes at Bikram Yoga LES for more than a year and said the only negative part is all the laundry.

“Tricia truly has a gift to deliver the perfect balance of wit and wisdom, all the while coaxing the body into never-realized positions and undreamed feats of strength,” Stilson said.

Donegan’s yoga business is just one of her many ventures. She is also a Lower East Side community activist and a mother of a 5-year-old daughter, Lula.

“I’m here to change the world,” she said. “I build communities wherever I go.”

Donegan was born in Michigan and moved to New York City in 2001. Prior to her career as a yoga instructor, she worked as a restaurant owner in Atlanta. Although she loved the restaurant business and being a community activist in Atlanta, she feels much more at home in her yoga space at 172 Allen St.

“Everyone who comes to the yoga studio is trying to empower themselves or better themselves in some way,” she said. “This is a true well-being destination for people, so it becomes this safe haven for people to come and let go of themselves.”

For more than a decade, Donegan has been teaching Bikram yoga, or hot yoga, which is a series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises in high-heat, high-humidity rooms. While Bikram originated in the early 1970s, it has became popular in the United States in the past decade.
Donegan said the heat forces students to focus on their bodies and push themselves more than a regular exercise class.

“It’s sort of like spaghetti,” she said. “If you try to bend cold spaghetti, it breaks. But when you put it in the water, you can do whatever you want with it.”

Tamara Pollack, Donegan’s life partner, said part of what makes Donegan talented are her interpersonal skills and her deep understanding of yoga.

“She won’t tell you to blindly push into a locked knee, she won’t just coach you into a deeper backbend,” she said. “Instead she will empower you in your weakness and lead you toward your strengths. She wants to see you try, and once you enter her hot room, that’s all you want to do.”
Four years ago, Donegan created a class that combined her love of yoga with her passion for community engagement. Nite Sweats is a donation-based class that’s offered the first Friday of every month.

The proceeds go to the Lower East Side Girls Club, which counts Donegan among its board members. The Club serves girls and young women from ages 8 to 23, teaching them the importance of education, healthy eating and equality.

“We’re not just babysitting girls from the projects,” Donegan said. “We’re giving them power.”
Donegan said Nite Sweats rakes in about $1,000 a month for the Girls Club.

“Tricia Donegan’s luminous and infectious presence enriches our community in boundless ways,” said Lyn Pentecost, the visionary behind the Girls Club. “She lives, works and runs her unique business on the Lower East Side and sends her daughter to school on the Lower East Side. One can’t get more ‘community’ than that.”

And while Donegan rarely leaves the neighborhood, she frequently goes on tour with Lady Gaga as her fitness instructor. She said she’s proud of her accomplishments in life thus far, but attributes most of her success to yoga.

“I have so many ideas, I have so much energy and it wasn’t until I slowed my head down with yoga that I realized why I am here,” she said. “Once you get real precise, then your dreams come and chase you.”

Jenny Gensterblum transforms cafeteria food into healthy and delectable meals

By Alex Mikoulianitch

Jenny Gensterblum isn’t your ordinary lunch lady working at Léman Preparatory School and flipping hash browns. She’s got an impressive arsenal of cooking skills up her sleeve, all backed by a degree from the French Culinary Institute in New York, which she deploys in earnest to provide delicious, nutritious meals for the school’s students and faculty on a daily basis.

From a young age, Gensterblum was surrounded by a culinary atmosphere. Starting from the garden her family owned, to her mother’s cooking talents, the young Michigan-born girl began budding an affinity for the kitchen that eventually proved to be part of her career.

“Mom was a big cook and really influenced how I like to eat and what I think about food,” Gensterblum said.

She admits it was unexpected for her when she realized her path was going in the direction of the culinary arts, though looking back on it now, it seems all too obvious.

“It definitely surprised me, but I realized I was spending all my free time learning recipes and having dinner parties and spending all my money on exotic ingredients, so it’s definitely something that occurred to me later on,” Gensterblum said.

This realization prompted Gensterblum to travel to the Big Apple and enroll at the French Culinary Institute, which she believes was the most enriching experience she had ever had.

“I think it was the best year of my life,” Gensterblum said. “It’s one thing to enjoy cooking and being able to doing it on your free time. But being able to do it every single day was so amazing. I learned so much and I met so many great people. I think it was a challenge trying to figure out what I was going to do once I graduated, but luckily I found a place.”

Gensterblum didn’t automatically stumble upon a position at the school. She went the traditional route, working at a few restaurants first.

“I started working at a restaurant in the East Village, and I was there for probably around seven months after I graduated,” Gensterblum said. “It really wasn’t something that was resonating with me. I was seeing a lot in the news about school food lunch reform and ways that you could get involved with it, and I ended up finding an opening at [Léman] and I came straight here.”

It was here that Gensterblum began focusing her efforts on school lunch reform. The kind of lunch kids eat at Léman is much different from the average lunch you’ll see at a New York public school. The students go crazy for her kale chips, and she routinely makes healthier versions of traditional favorites, like corn chowder and marinara sauce, from scratch. She’s even compiled her team’s recipes into a cookbook, Secret Sauce, to bring her kid-pleasing fare to the masses.

“I think, for us here, and I know there are a lot of schools out there, especially private schools where they have dining services companies that come in and [they] can change from week to week, but everyone that works here works solely for the school,” Gensterblum said. “We really, really care about the kids. [We want] to make sure they get a good meal and make sure that it’s something that they look forward to. We really take pride in what we put out for them.”

These efforts, which Gensterblum heavily credits to the help of the school administration and the rest of the staff, are what brought her recognition for her outstanding service to the culinary field.
“My staff and I are really honored,” Gensterblum said. “[We] work really hard every day to make sure that the kids are learning something about food and getting a good meal and look forward to coming to lunch. I’m just really grateful and honored to getting some recognition for it.”

Barbara Warren heads LGBT health division at Beth Israel

Barbara Warren, the director of LGBT health services for Beth Israel, is a humble woman who, according to Vice President for Public Affairs Jim Mandler, “has spent her entire career advocating for individuals in the LGBT community.”

Before arriving at Beth Israel 11 months ago, Warren spent ten years as a policy advocate, doing research and policy work. The position at Beth Israel was “an opportunity to actually implement this work in a real-world setting,” she explained. “That’s what’s gratifying.”

Since joining the hospital, she has overseen training in LGBT cultural competency to over a thousand employees. The hospital will also be piloting data collection for clinical management of gender identity this spring, under Warren’s supervision.

She noted in the past year there has also been increased community wellness programming.
Warren explained that the Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders group (SAGE) opened the first LGBT senior center in the world.

“We got a small grant from a donor to do a wellness series called ‘Ask the Docs’ at the SAGE senior center starting this winter,” Warren said. “We’re doing similar stuff with the LGBT center and Gay Men’s Health Crisis.”

Despite these successes, Warren’s time at Beth Israel has not been without its difficulties.
“It’s a huge challenge to take good intentions and policies and translate them into sustainable practice in an institution where over 8,000 employees across a variety of disciplines have a lot of other things they’re working on,” Warren said.

“There’s a lot of competing demands on time and interest,” she added.

One of the biggest challenges facing Warren is balancing the delicate art of meeting patient needs, while also protecting their safety and confidentiality.

She explained it’s a sensitive process, addressing these many factors. “It’s not just training,” she said. “It’s new systems, outreach in the community, grappling with issues in order to do quality assurance and document both emerging needs and best practices.”

These new systems include the implementation of electronic health records.

Warren explained that for health reasons it can be important to identify people who are lesbian, gay and transgender in these records, but there are confidentiality concerns, as it’s not simply “the same as saying your age or ethnicity.”

“We still don’t live in a world where people feel totally safe about being out and having their sexual orientation in an electronic health record,” Warren explained. “Even in a city like New York, where there’s equal protection under law.”

“I hear people say: ‘I don’t mind telling my provider, but if it’s on my electronic health record, what if I’m in the emergency room, unconscious, in Oklahoma, and it’s on my record that I’m a lesbian,’” Warren said. “That’s a challenge.”

Warren plans to continue addressing these issues as aggressively as possible, saying the challenges will not stop her or her colleagues.

“We’ll never have to worry again with this [electronic database] system about people being treated inappropriately in any setting … but there are related issues, particularly when you’re talking about sexual orientation.”

She continued: “There isn’t equal protection all the way across the board. Experience says it’s better to be out, [but] it’s still anxiety-provoking.”

“We’re still at the cutting edge in the real-world setting,” she added.

Nonetheless, Warren believes there’s broad support across the institution for improving services to LGBT patients.

“This institution is 100 percent behind working through the problems,” Warren said. “It’s really motivated by doing the right thing. A lot of people are motivated by getting patients, but [Beth Israel and its partners] are motivated by quality of care.”

While grappling with these tough issues on a regular basis, Warren even devotes some of her free time to providing medical care to others, including taking care of her elderly mother.

David Garza worked with Henry Street Settlement team to keep food and assistance flowing in the wake of the storm

by Emily Johnson

In the first days after Hurricane Sandy, thousands in downtown Manhattan were stranded in cold, dark apartments. FEMA, flush with disaster relief funds, had the resources to send a truck with 22,000 much-needed meals to the Lower East Side.

But when it came to actually getting that food into the mouths of hungry New Yorkers, the agency looked to a local organization that has spent more than a century getting to know the neighborhood from the ground up.

“We realized the value of our Meals on Wheels distribution routes,” said David Garza, the executive director of Henry Street Settlement, a nonprofit social service agency that has served the Lower East Side since the late 1800s. “We are a coordinating entity that distributes 1,200 meals a day to seniors, so quite literally we could do that work in the dark.”

And they did. Working by candlelight and flashlight and relying on smartphones and social media to coordinate volunteers in the absence of power and Wi-Fi, Garza and his Henry Street team oversaw an exhaustive door-to-door relief effort. They printed out maps and mobilized a brigade of volunteers on bicycles to canvas each building and follow up with food deliveries.

“Obviously the most severe challenge was the power outage,” Garza said. “The LES is a vertical area. People being trapped in buildings was the obvious and immediate concern. So we focused on identifying where and who needed supplies—for example, we’d get a tweet saying, ‘I have an old relative stuck in this apartment, can you help?’”

In many ways, the relief effort was not much of a departure from business as usual for Henry Street Settlement, which runs residential facilities, assists with job placement and offers senior services and youth programs to the largely low-income community. But Garza had never before encountered this level of need.

“People here always live on the precipice of poverty,” Garza said. “But what the storm has done is intensify that so they have to choose between food and rent. I was overwhelmed a couple of times. At one point literally right in front of Henry Street where we were distributing food … people were civil, but the need was palpable as lines formed. That really hit home. How incessant the need was.

It really struck me, ‘Thank God we’re here, what would they be doing?’”

During the blackout, Garza drove into the city daily at 5:30 a.m. to beat the HOV lane restrictions and stayed well into the evening. He was in regular phone communication with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to articulate what steps needed to be taken.

The speaker, who nominated Garza for the OTTY Award along with Chris Kui of Asian Americans for Equality, called the men “passionate, hard-working, organized members of the community” and credited them with saving lives.

“As soon as the storm hit, David was in immediate contact with my office,” Silver said. “He mobilized volunteers. He mobilized trucks to pick up FEMA supplies, he also had volunteers knock on doors and the National Guard deliver food supplies, meals and water.”

When the power finally came back on, Garza said, it brought a memorable end to what for many had become paralyzing uncertainty.

“You would think your local team won the Super Bowl,” he said, smiling. “You could hear it out in the street. It was emotional, because it had been palpable that we were in crisis. That nor’easter was bearing down. It was getting dangerous.”

With the immediate crisis behind them, Henry Street Settlement is gearing its efforts to more long-term recovery efforts like counseling and cash assistance.

“The silver lining for me and for Henry Street is really the performance of our staff and the way we came together as community,” Garza said. “People forget the value of collaboration. It’s literally our founding principle. It’s comforting to know that 121 years later, that’s what it’s still all about.”

James Rudolph foiled an armed robbery and responded to both WTC attacks

By Alex Mikoulianitch

Officer James Rudolph of Transit District 2 in downtown Manhattan dreamed of becoming a dentist when he was a child. He ended up becoming an outstanding officer who responded to both World Trade Center attacks, and who is praised as a hero.

“I always wanted to be a cop, deep down inside,” Rudolph said. But for a time, he said, “I wanted to be a dentist. My aunt and uncle bought a house, and a dentist used to be in it. I watched all the X-rays, and I thought it was pretty cool.”

Rudolph was born and raised in Brooklyn. He went to Nazareth High School and then to Kingsborough Community College. After enlisting in the New York Police Department, Rudolph has led a career worth writing a book about. From a shooting in Brooklyn, to the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, Rudolph was always there when he was needed.

“I was a very active police officer my whole career,” Rudolph said. “I was involved in a shooting back in 1992 in Lower Manhattan. I responded two times to the World Trade Center. I’ve locked up numerous criminals.”

The shooting, which involved an armed robbery, prompted the New York Daily News to honor him and his partner at the time, Michael Mazzioti.

“Back in 1992, I was on foot patrol with my partner at the time, who’s now retired, and pretty much what happened was, we were alerted to an armed robbery in the street,” Rudolph said. “There was a guy with a gun, holding up two tourists. When we went to apprehend him, he ran and jumped into a car.”

The situation immediately became hazardous as the suspect tried to escape.

“Unbeknownst to us, there was more than one perpetrator,” Rudolph said. “They tried to elude us and almost ran us over twice. Finally, the guy that was in the passenger seat stuck his gun out the window and you know, we had to do what we got to do. They were apprehended and there were 500 rounds of ammunition in the car.”

The arrests gave Rudolph a taste of what saving the day was like. But the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001 were what really made him understand what being a hero meant.

“In 1993, [I was] on foot patrol, that afternoon, when we responded,” Rudolph said. “There was a big boom that was heard all over Manhattan. We responded to the Trade Center and we were notified that someone from the Fire Department had fallen through a large crater and the mezzanine level into the garage area. So my partner and I helped carry all the equipment into the garage, which was all pancaked. We were standing in knee-deep water to try and rescue a [firefighter] out from under the debris. We [got him] out of there and just continued about the day.”

The second encounter with a World Trade Center attack was much more traumatic for Rudolph, as it was for many who saw the horror with their own eyes.

“[We] responded after the first plane hit the building, of course,” Rudolph said. “It was a very horrific day. [We were] just guiding people to safety, getting people out of the rubble. It was very traumatic.”

Rudolph stood, watched and realized that what was happening was actually a terrorist attack once the second plane smashed into the second tower.

“When the second plane hit, I was like, ‘We’re under attack! We have a problem,’” Rudolph said.

Thankfully, Rudolph survived the day, though he, among many others who experienced the devastating attack, went through a period of health problems brought on by exposure to the debris and smoke. Now, 11 years later, Rudolph is still wearing the dark blue uniform and making his daily rounds and is recognized for his unwavering service to the city of New York.

Dr. James Cooper leads by example

As the rector and chief executive of New York City’s venerable Trinity Wall Street Church, Dr. James H. Cooper has overseen all aspects of the organization, from Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel to St. Margaret’s House, since his appointment in 2004.

Cooper, who received his Master of Divinity and his Doctor of Ministry from the Virginia Theological Seminary, has a long and distinguished record of service which spans more than 30 years in the clergy.

Among his past accomplishments, Cooper helped to grow his parish in Ponte Vedra, Fla., from a membership of 700 to more than 5,500, and he founded a nonprofit to provide quality health care to the region’s aging population.

In addition, he helped provide growth money for new churches in Nigeria, Kenya and Spain while also establishing missions and other facilities in Tanzania, Bolivia, the Bahamas and Cuba.
As the current head of Trinity, Cooper has helped to carry on the church’s original mission to serve the poor and isolated. The church was established in 1697, predating the city of New York.
Cooper has worked tirelessly alongside groups including the Downtown Alliance, an organization that provides funding to house the homeless in lower Manhattan. The church also gave a leadership grant to the Downtown Alliance’s Back to Business grant program, which is focused on helping small businesses in Zone A and lower Manhattan recover from the effects of Hurricane Sandy.

In addition, Cooper helped to steer funding of $250,000 to the Robin Hood Foundation, supporting the transition of veterans returning from active duty in Afghanistan.

Other initiatives Cooper has lent his time and talent to include a Relief Bureau to counsel the sick and jobless, food pantries and soup kitchens at Trinity chapels around the city, global grant programs that award millions both abroad and to vital programs in New York as well as the massive relief effort and shelter the church provided to the rescue workers at Ground Zero after 9/11.
When the John Heuss House, a day shelter for the homeless, was forced to close several years ago, Cooper and the church responded by opening Charlotte’s Place, a drop-in and welcome center for all visitors to the community. Further, a brown-bag lunch program was started on the front steps of Trinity, which distributes hundreds of bag lunches each week to anyone in need.

Also of importance is Cooper’s skill as a financial manager, carefully managing Trinity’s Grants Program, which has funded more than $72 million in programs in some 85 countries around the world since 1972.

But of all his responsibilities, perhaps the most important is the management of Trinity Real Estate, which handles the parish’s 6 million square feet of commercial real estate in Lower Manhattan. The income generated from the church’s real estate holdings, which Trinity has held for more than 300 years, enables the organization to sustain and develop programs and ministries around the world.
Honored recently at a Manhattan awards ceremony, sponsored by the Federation of Manhattan Welfare Agencies, Cooper made some thoughtful remarks.

“We have great expectations of each other,” Cooper said. He noted that while Trinity has “wonderful ministries, grand programs and buildings,” they will ultimately be known “not by those ministries and programs or buildings; we will be known by the love we have for one another.”

He added that “love endures all things, and it is only love that never ends. God will make the path straight again, will rise up the valleys and take boulders and mountains and throw them into the sea. … We are part of it simply because we love one another.”

Cooper is also known in the interfaith community for the work he began shortly after his arrival to push for increased communication and understanding of differences that arose among persons of differing faiths after 9/11.

He continues to reach out to those who speak out about both economic and social injustices.

Liz Berger fights for her community as the president of the Downtown Alliance

By Susan Armitage

On the morning of 9/11, Liz Berger had just dropped off her oldest child for kindergarten at P.S. 234 and was on her way to work. Though she had already been active in civic life, she said, that devastating day reaffirmed her dedication to the community she loves.

“My first thought was about all we had done in the past 20 years and how it had been destroyed in 18 minutes,” said Berger, a native New Yorker who has lived south of Fulton Street for three decades and now heads the nonprofit Alliance for Downtown New York.

Berger served on the local Community Board at the time, but says 9/11 motivated her to deepen her involvement and take on new formal roles. She was honored to be asked to represent residents at the Senate Field Hearing.

“I think what you realize in those kind of crises is that your troubles and problems are really everybody’s,” Berger said. “And what that does is make them more urgent, rather than less urgent.”
In 2007, she became president of the Downtown Alliance, which manages the Business Improvement District for Lower Manhattan, after decades of work in government, community affairs and strategic planning.

Berger says the organization plays a key role in convening constituents to understand their needs. Through research, service, information and advocacy, the Downtown Alliance aims to make Lower Manhattan a better place to live, work and visit.

“Liz’s leadership is tremendous,” said Peter Poulakakos, a restaurateur and member of the Downtown Alliance board. “She inspires the board, she inspires the community. She’s got a great energy.”

Berger, whose commute to the office is a handy two blocks, loves living in what she calls a “complete community.”

“It’s a little village with probably the best-known business address in the world,” she said. “It’s that combination of knowing your neighbors and having unbelievable choices.”

She loves the parts of Lower Manhattan that evoke history, like Front Street, Stone Street and the city’s oldest park, Bowling Green. But the neighborhood, Berger said, “is about the past and the future, all together.”

Under her leadership, the Downtown Alliance is charting a forward-looking course. The organization has expanded its social media outreach to better connect with constituents, and the Downtown NYC free mobile app provides tips on places to visit and things to do in Lower Manhattan. The organization also anticipates new initiatives related to Lower Manhattan’s growing tech industry.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the Downtown Alliance also recently announced a new grant program to help affected small businesses in the Zone A areas of Lower Manhattan. While some suffered physical damage, Berger said, the bigger issue is a decline in foot traffic while some commercial and residential buildings undergo repairs.

“This is about Lower Manhattan big business supporting Lower Manhattan small business,” she said.

“It’s about business-to-business self-help. That’s really what our organization is about, and it’s a very important element of building this community.”

In addition to her role at the Downtown Alliance, Berger holds a myriad of other community positions. She is president of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association and serves on the boards of the Municipal Art Society, Film Forum, Second Stage Theatre, American Museum of Natural History Planetarium Authority, the New York Building Congress and the Trust for Governors Island.
Berger simply says she likes to be busy. “That’s why you live in a city; because you want to participate in public life and do what you can to support the institutions that make urban life worth living,” she said.